Effect of hypothermia on doxorubicin-induced cardiac myoblast signaling and cell death.

Background: Anthracyclines (AC) are useful chemotherapeutic agents whose principal limitation is cardiac toxicity, which may progress to heart failure, transplantation or even death. We have shown that this toxicity involves oxidative stress-induced activation of the DNA damage pathway. Hypothermia has been shown to be protective against other diseases involving oxidative stress but has not been studied in models of AC toxicity.